The Home for Washington Nationals Game Talk

Feb. 17

The catchers were hitting on Field 1 as we came into the park.  Spouse yelled at one of the fielders, “Hey, throw me one!” He responded “where’s your glove?”  When she said “home in my dresser drawer,” he bounced one out to her. No kids in the vicinity, so we kept it.

Said good morning to general manager Mike Rizzo and told him we’d met his dad in Arizona last fall, where he’d told us to (1) hit Mike up for free tickets and (2) give him a hard time next time when we saw him. Rizzo said “was he yelling at everyone?”  and got a laugh out of the “free ticket” gambit. Rizzo has his own little cart marked GM on the front. Other carts are marked Clubhouse and Security—but they otherwise look the same.  Then there are what I’ll call the groundskeepers’ carts, the clubhouse-schleppage carts, and the field-grooming machines, as well as the fan transport carts (new this year).  So all-in-all, you need to be ready to step off into the grass at any time.

In case anyone was wondering “where’s Gio?” I can confirm that he’s alive and well.  He stopped by to give Susan-at-the-gate a kiss and told her he’d just been keeping out of the sun.  After seeing the pitchers heading off for practice, we decided to focus on the activities at Fields 3, 4, 5, 6 near the back of the complex.  Those fields have small bleachers next to them, and if you position yourself strategically, you can sit in the shade of the young trees that shade about 5% of each bleacher.  Nice thought to plant those trees:  they are only going to be there for the benefit of the fans since the shade will never reach the playing area.  I hope I’ll be coming back here long enough for those trees to shade the entire bleachers!

The group started warming up with some calisthenics, led by the little guy in the bucket hat, far end of the third row. I call this one dancing with the stars. Continue reading →

Feb. 16

So, today there were a lot more fans at the FITTEAM Ballpark of the Palm Beaches.  That included a number of Astros fans who said that they weren’t doing that much over on the Astros side, so came over to check out the Nats side. There was a snack stand (water $4.50, but okay to bring your own).  Carts were glad to take people around to the fields, back to the parking lot (shared with the Astros fans), back to the bathrooms at field 5/6, or up to the team store. Continue reading →

Run ‘til they tag you . . . or how to sneak into Nationals Spring Training a day early.

So, we head off for the Ballpark of the Palm Beaches. We pull into the back parking lot through the same gate we used last year, and park by the entrance we used last year (although last year we were going to games). There was only one car parked there, which seemed a bit unusual, but we were earlier than the workout schedule, and there’s a media/players lot on the other side, so we figured that’s where the official attendees were parked. Continue reading →